Two enumerative results on cycles of permutations

Abstract

Answering a question of Bona, it is shown that for n≥2 the probability that 1 and 2 are in the same cycle of a product of two n-cycles on the set {1,2,…,n} is 1/2 if n is odd and 1/2 - 2/(n-1)(n+2) if n is even. Another result concerns the polynomial P[subscript λ](q) = ∑[subscript w]q[superscript κ]((1,2,…,n)⋅w), where w ranges over all permutations in the symmetric group S[subscript n] of cycle type λ, (1,2,…,n) denotes the n-cycle 1→2→⋯→n→1, and κ(v) denotes the number of cycles of the permutation v. A formula is obtained for P[subscript λ](q) from which it is deduced that all zeros of P[subscript λ](q) have real part 0.